For the believers to bear the cross is for them to identify themselves with the crucified Christ. Christ underwent death by crucifixion, and we must be one with Him. This is to identify ourselves not with the glorified Christ but with a crucified Christ.
To bear the cross means to bear the death of Christ on us and allow the death of Christ to work on us continually in order to put our self to death. To bear the cross is also to stay in the death of Christ. The death of Christ is not only our destiny but also our destination. If we would be transformed and conformed to the image of Christ as the firstborn Son, we need to stay in His death, taking His death as our residence, our home. Therefore, the meaning of bearing the cross is to identify ourselves with the crucified Christ and then to stay with Him in His death. If we do not stay in Christ’s death, we are casting aside His cross. However, when we stay in His death, we are bearing the cross. This is to be conformed to the death of Christ.
We need to have a clear vision that bearing the cross is not a matter of suffering but of keeping the self under the termination of death. The cross of Christ is the terminating death, and we must stay in the place of this termination. To remain there is to bear the cross. As those who are bearing the cross, we keep ourselves under Christ’s termination. By the Lord’s grace, we should remain in the place of termination for our entire life.
We should not only bear the cross, identifying ourselves with the crucified Christ and staying in His death, but also realize the fact that our old man has been crucified. Romans 6:6 says, “Knowing this, that our old man has been crucified with Him that the body of sin might be made of none effect, that we should no longer serve sin as slaves.” We have been baptized into Christ, and now we are in Christ. Because we are in Him, whatever He has passed through is our history. He has been crucified, and His crucifixion is ours. This is a glorious fact. We need to pray that the Lord will give us a clear vision of the fact that we are in Him and that we have been crucified with Him. God has accomplished the glorious fact of putting us into Christ. Our old man has been crucified with Him.
“Knowing this” in Romans 6:6 actually refers to the seeing of a fact in a spiritual vision. Such a vision is basic to our knowing. After we see a certain thing, we cannot say that we do not know that thing. Likewise, if we have a clear vision of the fact that our old man has been crucified with Christ, we shall know this fact in its reality. We need to pray that the Lord will deliver us from contentment with a mere doctrinal understanding of Romans 6:6 and grant us a clear vision in our spirit of the divine fact that our old man has been crucified with Christ.
Because our old man has been crucified, the body of sin has been made of none effect. Simply realizing that our old man has been crucified causes the body of sin, the sinful body, to become of none effect, so that we should no longer serve sin as slaves. Since we have been crucified with Christ, the body of sin is unemployed; it loses its job. It has nothing to do.
Romans 6:7 goes on to say, “He who has died is justified from sin.” To be justified from sin is to be cleared, discharged, freed from sin. Having been justified from sin, we are no longer indebted to sin or obligated to it.
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